The Derelict
Previous: The Reluctant Stowaway The Derelict As you recall from last week, Professor John Robinson, father of the first family to attempt colonization of outer space is helplessly adrift in space after his tether broke while spacewalking. John refuses to let Major Don West, a veteran spacewalker, come to his rescue. He feels that Don's vital role as ship's pilot makes him too valuable to risk in his way. Instead Maureen Robinson, John's wife, dons her spacesuit and enters the airlock. Once the outer door is open, she attempts to fire a line to John with a rocket gun. The first attempt fails, but she eventually succeeds, reeling John in to safety. Just then, an alarm sounds on the Jupiter 2's control panel. The Jupiter is approaching a blazing hot comet. On its current course it will pass within 5000 miles of the intruder, incinerating all life aboard the Jupiter. Don asks John to return to the ship immediately so that he can change course. John refuses, insisting that it will take only a short time to make the needed repairs to the ship's navigational scanner. With Maureen's help, John ventures to the top of the Jupiter with no tether and makes the needed repairs. The comet is approaching and the ship is getting hotter. John and Maureen attempt to open the outer airlock hatch to re-enter the Jupiter 2, but the heat of the comet has expanded the metal and the hatch won't open. Trapped outside John and Maureen are exposed to the full fury of the comet's blaze. John orders Don to fire the rockets and change course, a violent maneuver that will dislodge John and Maureen from the ship and result in their deaths. Just then, Will Robinson suggests using a fire extinguisher to cool down the hatch so that it will open properly. John and Maureen are already unconscious from the heat of the comet as Don enters the airlock with a fire extinguisher. The fire extinguisher successfully cools the hatch and allows Don to open it. He pulls John and Maureen inside and the other members of the family work to revive them as Don changes course. The ship is saved. As the crew enters its sleep period, Don stays up late working with the repaired navigational equipment to attempt to determine the Jupiter 2's location. Judy Robinson|Judyy]] stays up to keep him company. Don detects a radio signal. Something is approaching the ship. This time, the intruder is an alien spaceship. The family gathers near the large window at the upper deck control station to see. Dr. Smith remains on the lower deck. He is convinced that the ship is from Earth, and that it was sent by the same unspecified foreign government that hired him to sabotage the Jupiter 2. Smith attempts to contact the ship using his spy radiophone but gets nothing but a loud squeal in his earphones. As the Jupiter approaches the enormous size of the alien ship becomes apparent. Because it does not respond in any way to the Jupiter's approach, John and Maureen speculate that it is a derelict, its crew dead from the heat of the comet. John orders Don to make a close approach and fly around the ship to inspect it. Don cautions John about the risks presented by the unknown ship, but follows his orders. When they approach the alien ship, the Jupiter 2 is seized by a force of some sort, which Don cannot resist with the Jupiter 's thrusters. A cone shaped protuberance on the alien ship opens like the petals of a flower and the Jupiter is drawn inside through this opening. The Jupiter extends its tripod of landing legs and lands on a surface inside the alien ship, which has gravity and a breathable Earth-like atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. John, Don, and Dr. Smith venture outside, leaving the others in the relative safety of the ship. They discover a strange realm covered with cobweblike structures, which John speculates may be a crystalline energy source. The party wanders about, exploring, and eventually discovers an alien control panel. Dr. Smith still believes the ship is from Earth, and separates from the others in an attempt to find a member of its supposed human crew. John and Don discover that the alien control station is a navigational database, listing planets according to mass and other parameters. As various astronomical photos are displayed, they view the database, identifying a nearby planet with habitable conditions. Meanwhile, back at the Jupiter 2, Will Robinson is frustrated because his father didn't include him in the exploring expedition outside. Outwitting the robot, who is guarding the exit hatch, Will ventures outside on his own to have a look around. Will encounters one of the alien crew of the ship. It is a giant amorphous creature that apparently communicates by means of electrical discharges. Will politely introduces himself to the alien as Will Robinson of the planet Earth. He attempts to communicate with it. Will is discovered by Dr. Smith who is horrified to realize that the ship is not from Earth. Viewing the alien as a monster, Smith soon zaps it with Will Robinson's laser gun. The injured alien and others of its kind give chase to the pair as they rush back to the Jupiter 2. Don and John do likewise. Using a laser rifle, John somehow disables the alien hatch controls so that the Jupiter can leave the alien ship. The ship lifts off, and the alien flower petal hatch obligingly opens to allow the fleeing spaceship to exit. The Jupiter 2 is safe and free. Using the alien navigational data, the Jupiter approaches a habitable planet. John wants to land so that the Jupiter can effect repairs under normal gravity. Maureen fears that landing on an unknown planet is too dangerous. Will the unknown planet be hostile or friendly to the Robinsons? Tune in next week, same time, same channel to find out... References This event would haunt them when some time later the crew of Juptier 2 are put under trial. Some notes on scientific accuracy I first saw this episode when I was seven years old. Even then, I knew that the nucleus of a comet is made of ice and dust and is very cold. The writers of Lost in Space portrayed it as a blazing hot hazard. Shame on them. Lost in Space started out to be a serious family adventure series. It's too bad the writers didn't have the foresight to hire a science advisor. By injecting a bit more realism, they could have had a much better and more imaginative show, with educational value for its audience. They might have avoided running out of good ideas and allowing the show to deteriorate into fantasy silliness. This episode portrays an encounter between the Jupiter 2 and an alien spacecraft in deep space. This senario is implausible, for reasons discussed by science and science fiction writer Aurthur C. Clarke in one of his books. He concluded that even if the galaxy is teeming with spacefaring alien civilizations, interstellar space is so huge that the probability of two spacecraft encountering each other, on parallel trajectories, in deep space is infinitesimal. This episode marked the first portrayal of extraterrestrial intelligence in Lost in Space. To their credit, the writers portrayed the aliens as non-human and communicating by electrical discharges (as do electric fish in real life) rather than by English words. Unfortunately, later episodes soon deviated from such a plausible portrayal of aliens. 'Invaders from the fifth dimension' portrayed English speaking aliens (even though they lacked the mouths with which to say the words). The first portrayal of an alien identical to a human was 'The Keeper' portrayed by Michael Rennie later in the first season. By contrast, Star Trek from its very beginning portrayed extraterrestrials as English speaking humanoids with only minor differences from humans such as pointed ears. Television and movie science fiction usually portrays extraterrestrials as closely resembling humans. They even imagine them as resembling Americans, British, Australians, and a few other human groups in speaking English. Scientists regard this as highly unlikely. If extraterrestrial intelligence does exist, it is likely to be shaped by the same sorts of evolutionary processes that shape life here on Earth. We know that evolution on Earth has produced an incredible diversity of forms, from exotic jellyfish and octopi, to insects, to the more familiar vertebrates. Life on Earth includes numerous fundamentally different animal body plans, all of which are successful members of Earth's ecosystems. This diversity hints at the range of what is possible on other planets. We also know that the process of evolution involves a significant element of randomness. Random genetic mutations form the basis of evolutionary change. On a larger scale, random events like the impacts of asteroids and comets with the Earth have profoundly shaped evolutionary history. It was an impact a the end of the Cretaceous period in Earth's history that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and paved the way for the rise of the mammals to dominance. If things had gone a bit differently, perhaps mollusks would be the dominant land dwelling animal. Many of the body plans of the major groups of modern animals arose during the Cambrian period, about 600 million years ago. If things had gone differently back then, perhaps an entirely different panoply of animal body plans would have emerged and modern life would take drastically different forms. In a sense, the human form is a consequence of millions of rolls of the dice, any one of which could have gone differently. Thus, if aliens do exist, they are highly unlikely to closely resemble humans. We can't be entirely sure that there won't be some general resemblances though. This is because random events are only a part of the process of evolution. The non-random process of natural selection is equally crucial. Because of differences in their bodily traits due to random genetic mutations, some members of a species of animals are better at surviving and reproducing than others. These are the ones that will pass their genes on to the next generation. Repeated over many generations, this process of sorting out genes finds animal body plans that work well, and discards ones that don't. Sometimes only certain sorts of structures work well for a particular purpose. Even though the wings of birds, bats, and prehistoric flying reptiles all evolved separately, they all look a lot alike. This is because there are only a certain number of ways to make a working wing. The eyes of octopi and fish evolved separately but also look alike, because there are only a limited number of ways to make an eye that works. This phenomenon is called convergent evolution. It's possible that being a biped with two arms to manipulate objects might be a form uniquely well suited for intelligent beings. If so, then despite the randomness of mutation, natural selection could find this form again and again through the process of convergent evolution. The wings of birds, bats, and prehistoric reptiles are generally similar, but different in detail. Bird wings have feathers, bat wings have fur, reptile wings had just skin. The anatomy of the bones in the wing is different in each case. Even if aliens are bipeds with two arms, we can expect that all the details will likewise be different. 'Next episode: 'Island in the Sky Category:Episodes